Type Hunting

“Look!!! Typography!” #typeintheenvironment #typography #typeallaround #gravestone #graphics A photo posted by Sancha de Burca (@sanchagdp) on Sep 25, 2015 at 9:52am PDT   esterday we took our HND Graphic Design students out on a little typographic tour of their college town of Tonbridge. We wanted to stress the point that we spend our lives bombarded […]

Happiness is Good Handwriting!

As I have mentioned before I have something of an obsession with handwriting. As an obsessive maker of notes in an age that is witnessing a rapid decline in handwriting, I was fascinated and somewhat amused to discover T. Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms from 1888. Hill extolled the virtues of good penmanship, specifically […]

Thinking About (design) Thinking

o begins the new term at West Kent College and this week and my colleague and I have been introducing the new students to aspects of design thinking. We’re keen to stress the importance of thinking and approaches to the design process, trying to reiterate that using a computer as the exclusive means of problem […]

Mail me Art: A Mail Art Project

ecently I’ve been trying to find time to indulge in independent, creative projects. Teaching for three institutions and having three young kids doesn’t leave much time for doing my own thing and so I’ve been seeking ways to incentivise me to get things done, I’ve also been discussing with one or more of my students […]

The Green Man—A Design Mystery.

A Green Man “a head disgorging vegetation from eyes, nostrils, ears or forehead, or a foliate head where the cheeks are depicted as leaf-like.” Doel & Doel (2010) or many years I’ve been fascinated by Green Men.  The meaning of these ancient faces made up of leaves remains a mystery in terms of their cultural […]

Graphic Design Show 2015 West Kent College (University of Kent)

Another great year for our HE Graphic Design & Illustration students at West Kent College (University of Kent). Well done to all. Here a a few of the works exhibited along with a brochure put together by yours truly. [print_gllr id=4275] West Kent College offers a range of creative Higher Education courses including Graphic Design […]

Pick-me-Up 2015 at Somerset House

nce again we took our students to the current offerings of Somerset House’s Pick Me Up, Graphic Arts Festival. I really wanted to see something different, something inspiring, something to amaze me and I came away feeling mostly flat. The ‘festival’ seemed to have lost its buzz and its edgy excitement . There was little of […]

Ladybird by Design

ike the many thousands of British children who, like me, grew up reading Ladybird Books in the 1970s—and the decade either side of this—can doubtless recall a certain fascination with at least one Ladybird title. For me it was the beautifully realistic and slightly unnerving illustrations by Robert Lumley for The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Like […]

Typography e-book

In the summer of 2014 I wrote series of blog posts for the Interactive Design Institute (IDI) on the theme of typography and typeface design. The posts are very much aimed at those wanting to gain an insight into the fundamentals of type and some of the approaches to its design. IDI have now collated […]